DeskArtes Industrial Design System

Supported hardware / operating system configurations

General requirements for PC/Windows:

  • Minimum Intel Core2 or AMD Athlon 1 GHz processor.
  • About 250 MB of free disk space for the programs.
  • Minimum of 1 GB RAM, 2 GB recommended.
  • Swap space twice the amount of main memory (RAM) recommended.
  • Graphics adapter must support at least 16-bit colors for 1024x768 screen resolution.
  • Graphics adapter with OpenGL support at hardware level recommended.
  • 3-button mouse (or 2-buttons + wheel) recommended.
  • Windows XP professional.

General requirements for Apple Mac OS X platform:

  • About 150 MB of free disk space for the programs.
  • Minimum of 384 MB RAM, 1 GB recommended.
  • Graphics adapter supporting OpenGL hardware acceleration with Apple X11.
  • 3-button or wheel mouse recommended.

General requirements for sgi Irix platforms:

  • About 150 MB of free disk space for the programs.
  • Minimum of 64 MB RAM, 128 MB recommended.
  • X Window System server with 8-bit PseudoColor or 24-bit TrueColor default visual.
  • Graphics adapter with OpenGL support at hardware level recommended.

Notes

On operating systems:

Windows 7

Deskartes IDS is currently not supported on either 32-bit or 64-bit versions of Windows 7.

Windows Vista

Deskartes IDS is currently not supported on either 32-bit or 64-bit versions of Windows Vista.

Windows XP (64-bit)

Deskartes IDS is not currently supported on 64-bit version of Windows XP.

Windows XP (32-bit)

There has been problems running background commands on some Deskartes IDS installations on 32-bit version of Windows XP. In this case for example the image conversion commands from the File Window middle list menu fail, with the error message like "[1] + Done(134) ? 2816 Abort Rgb2Bmp" in the IDS startup window. Currently there is no solution known to this problem.

Windows 2000

With some graphics adapters there has been problems in window refreshing when running Deskartes IDS on Windows 2000. Usually those problems can however be fixed by decreasing the hardware acceleration of the graphics adapter or changing its color depth. In most cases the 24-bit or 32-bit true color has worked best.

Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion):

The Apple X11 is as default included in the Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) installation. Therefore it is not included in the DeskArtes IDS/RT installation package for Mac OS X 10.5.

If you have done a modified installation of Mac OS X 10.7 and left out the X11, you should install that first from the Mac OS X 10.5 installation media (DVD), before installing the DeskArtes IDS/RT.

Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard):

The Apple X11 is as default included in the Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) installation. Therefore it is not included in the DeskArtes IDS/RT installation package for Mac OS X 10.5.

If you have done a modified installation of Mac OS X 10.6 and left out the X11, you should install that first from the Mac OS X 10.5 installation media (DVD), before installing the DeskArtes IDS/RT.

Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard):

The Apple X11 is as default included in the Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) installation. Therefore it is not included in the DeskArtes IDS/RT installation package for Mac OS X 10.5.

If you have done a modified installation of Mac OS X 10.5 and left out the X11, you should install that first from the Mac OS X 10.5 installation media (DVD), before installing the DeskArtes IDS/RT.

Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger):

The DeskArtes IDS/RT installation package for Mac OS X 10.4 only supports the Intel machines.

If you have a machine with a PowerPC processor, you can install the DeskArtes IDS/RT from the installation package for Mac OS X 10.3. The X11 version included in that package however works only with Mac OS X 10.3, so you need to install the X11 from the Mac OS X 10.4 installation media (DVD). Then use the modified installation type for installing the DeskArtes IDS/RT and leave the X11 out from that installation.

Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther):

The DeskArtes IDS/RT installation package for Mac OS X 10.3 only supports the PowerPC machines. If you have a machine with an Intel processor, you need to upgrade to at least Mac OS X 10.4 to be able to run the DeskArtes IDS/RT.

On graphics adapters:

ATI Radeon 9700 Pro

With older driver the default hardware acceleration settings of the ATI Radeon 9700 Pro cause drawing errors in DeskArtes IDS. Disabling the acceleration for OpenGL antialiasing partly fixes the problem, but that also slows down the graphics speed substantially. The problem can be fixed by upgrading the driver from ATI web-site (to version 6.14.01.6255).

Intel 855G/865G (Extreme Graphics)

DeskArtes IDS with the Exceed 5.1.3 cannot be run on machines having Intel 855G/865G graphics adapter. The 3D Extensions of the Exceed version 5.1.3, which is included in the DeskArtes IDS installation media, cannot provide OpenGL functionality with this graphics. As result of this only the "wireframe" and "box" drawing modes are available in IDS.

There is currently no solution known to this problem with the Exceed 5.1.3. The problem can however be fixed by running Exceed 6 with the runtime support for Exceed 5 programs.